Behind the Shot: Crystalline

In this article I'll tell about the interesting process of producing my image 'Crystalline'. I shot it during January 2014, and processed it at the time, but lately the addition of new Photoshop features lead me to revisit it, and reprocess it in a different way. This image is an HDR-Panorama, a kind of shot which is usually technically difficult to produce, but as I show below, this difficulty is now relegated to the past. I hope you find the explanation interesting and helpful.

This image features an ice cave we visited in Breiðamerkurjökull glacier, an outlet glacier of the larger glacier of Vatnajökull in southeastern Iceland. Breiðamerkurjökull ends in Jökulsárlón, the famous glacier lagoon, and after spending 3 days in the lagoon area during my 2014 'Land of Ice' workshop, we ended the trip with a visit to this spectacular cave.

The ice cave was one of the biggest that I'd ever seen, and it stretched over a hundred meters into the glacier. Low winter light and clear skies produced a huge bonus: the cave's wall was struck with wonderful golden light, which contributed greatly to both the color and the composition.

Composition

The composition mainly consists of a central interest point (the cave opening) and several linear elements going away from it. See the scheme below.

Several linear forms begin at the cave's entrance and draw into the cave: the lit patches on the top left and bottom right, the lines formed by the volcanic ash embedded in the ice on the top right, and the stream on the bottom left.

By having the longer lines on the left, I balanced the position of the central interest point on the right.

Setup and Shooting

The image was taken with my Sony A7R, which I purchased right before the trip. The A7R has a 36 megapixel sensor, but to get even more detail, I used a Canon TS-E 24mm F3.5 and shot what I like to call a 'shift-o-rama'. This means I used the shifting ability to produce 3 overlapping shots, which, when stitched, make up a panorama with greater total resolution. The unique thing about producing panoramas with the TS lens is that the resulting images are perfectly aligned straight out of the camera, which means less loss of quality once the panorama is created.

Shooting the middle of the frame. Sorry about the blur - it was a bit cold...

In addition to this, since the scene had very large global contrast, I used a HDR technique. That means I should call this an 'HDR-shift-o-rama'! Quite a mouthful, but it sums up the idea.

To get the dynamic range I needed, I used two exposure settings. For every exposure setting, I took three shots: one with the lens shifted to the leftmost position, one without shift and one with the lens shifted to the rightmost position.

The three positions on the lens. Using the shifting ability produces seamless panoramas, for extra width and resolution.

I then changed the exposure setting and did it again. The two series of shots were taken at F16 (for sufficient depth of field), ISO 100 (for maximal quality) and at 0.6 and 1.6 second exposure times.

Some of you might rightfully say that I should've taken another, brighter set of images. That's true, but I was limited in time and frankly, I didn't notice there were still very dark parts. Thankfully, the Sony A7R has amazing shadow recovery, and I was later able to get all the detail I wanted in post processing. Another thing I could've done better was shoot at a wider aperture (and focus-stack) to get a bit more sharpness, but again, I didn't have enough time and the TS-E 24mm is amazingly sharp even at F16.

Here are the 6 (untouched RAW) images I used to make this shot.

Post-Processing

After shooting this image I went through a very tricky process of merging the 6 exposures to an HDR panorama. I was still not too happy with it and decided to leave it alone. A few months ago, however, a new version of Photoshop came out with the astounding feature of both HDR and panorama processing during the RAW file stage. This triggered my imagination and threw me back to this image. I knew I could do something better with it now.

Thanks to Adobe Camera Raw's newest feature, post processing of this image was conducted almost exclusively in ACR. I played a bit with the controls when I realized the new features don't only allow you to create HDR and panorama files - they allow you to create an HDR-panorama! Let's see the stages and understand how I created the file.

The first thing I did was load all 6 files to ACR. I then proceeded to create three HDR files, each from 2 exposures. This was done by selecting each pair of files, then right-clicking on the filmstrip options, selecting 'Merge to HDR'.

In the HDR menu I chose to align the files (just to be safe), and I also chose auto-toning, which doesn't really matter but usually results in a low-contrast setting which I find comfortable to continue working from.

Each of the 3 pairs of files yielded a DNG file with extended dynamic range. This DNG can be further manipulated in ACR. Next I loaded the 3 DNG files, selected all of them and clicked 'Merge to Panorama' on the filmstrip menu. Note that the auto toning has changed the look of the files, but I'll deal with that later. Also note that these changes are saved inside the DNG file, as opposed to a separate .xmp files when working with RAW.

In the panorama creation menu, I chose perspective projection and clicked 'merge'.

The resulting panorama is a 225 MB, 73 megapixel monster, with tons of dynamic range and amazing detail. The rest of the post processing was done in ACR as well. Let's see what I did to perfect the shot.

First of all, I cropped the image to get rid of the relatively empty space on the bottom. I also balanced the exposure and contrast using the ACR controls.

Cropping the image

Using the ACR controls to balance the exposure and global contrast

Although not shown here, I added a tiny bit of vignetting, and also turned the hue of the aqua colors toward the blue, to have the colors more similar to those I witnessed in reality. What I do want to show are some of the local adjustments I made. As you can see, most of them are simply clarity and contrast boosts, to further emphasize the natural textures and colors of the ceiling of the cave. The adjustment specifications and masks are visible in the screen shots below.

After all this work, I was left with a 67MP, well-exposed and balanced HDR-shift-o-rama. For internet viewing, I converted the color space to sRGB, performed size-reduction and some sharpening, and I was done. I hope you enjoy the result.

Blow highlights are quite disturbing and the shadows look a bit too bright, but I wasn't there, so cannot say if it looks natural or not. Light in the reality can sometimes look "unnatural", if conditions are rare.

Personally I think it is a very nice image indeed, and reading about how it was produced was very interesting. I tend not to do much PP, but seeing how you have done this has given me some ideas. Many thanks!

One small point: shifting the lens only produces images precisely aligned for stitching "right out of the camera" when there are no foreground objects. In fact, that method produces parallax misalignment between shots, which the stitching software may or may not be able to correct. The remedy is to use a lens collar to mount the lens to the tripod and shift the camera body. I know of one such collar that is custom made for the Canon TS-E lenses (expensive, but high quality) --

Dparsons: you change your point of view - you have a parallax problem - since the lens position is changed, means relative distances of foreground and background subjects change. With this lens the problem is small, since the shift is small. But imagine a larger format tilt-shift lens with larger shift - there will be a substantial change of the point of perspective.

The idea of the nodal point or, more precisely, the "no-parallax point" is to maintain the perspective and angles of views all the same with all photos in panoramas to be stitched while panning and tilting. This allows to do the stitching in the specialized software smoothly without artifacts of the change of perspective. If you move the lens instead of rotating around the no-parallax point, you will change the perspective - the lens will see the scenery from another point, with other angles - the foreground object will move to other positions. You may observe e.g. two of the same stone or flower. That is why Hartblei implements the idea of shifting the camera, and not the lens, for which it offers a tripod collar on the lens. But I personally do not like this idea either, since it uses the extreme parts of the image circle of the same lens, where, especially with wide-angle ones, to keep the image rectilinear, i.e. without barrel distortion (as in fish-eyes), it loses proportions.

... this defeats the idea of panorama stitching - the best is the traditional panoramic setup with a special pano head. But certainly the idea implemented in Hartblei should be fine if at least moderate tele lens are used - they do not have that bad loss of proportions.

@rrccad - That's a good workaround. However, if one is also shifting vertically (which often is needed for buildings, for example), one has to estimate the lateral compensation on the rail. That method probably will be accurate enough with any but the most extreme UWA lens or scenes with extremely varied subject distances.

Notice the new rig designed by HCam for using the Canon 11-24mm lens on a Sony A7RII -- my dream setup, which solves almost all the issues for architectural photographers.

Thanks for posting about this workflow. I agree that based on what I see on your site that this is far from your best. Did you use the same approach on the "m_Vatnajokull_Ice_Cave_17-12-2011_hdr7" image on the Land of Ice workshop page? That is an extremely awesome image...well done there!

Also, did you load up the images in ACR using Lightroom? The only other way I found was to drag and drop the images into Photoshop which then loaded them into the filmstrip.

I see the point in some saying that the result is not the best... either from this photographer or compared to some others'.

To me sometimes the process of taking a picture... planning, execution, adjustments, re-takes... is as much fun as the end result. There is no time to do this every day but when possible, the process is enjoyable. It is only possible with nature/landscapes and sometimes wildlife (not with moving subjects). It is possible mostly as a hobby (because as professional one is expected to produce the results and clients are critical).

There are situations where the best photo produced in 'auto' mode is less enjoyable than a photo less than best but was taken how the photographer wanted to.

From that point of view, I like the work. The result may not be the best but better than mine!

thanks of sharing, but I don't think it's a great article. I'm not sure if the article is about composition, HDR technique or post-processing.

1 - if it's composition, for me it doesn't work and the image has no draw. At least for me.2 - if it's about HDR technique. I think the HDR is not that great and it doesn't add that much more DR to the image with all the blown-out highlights.3 - if it's about post-processing technique, then it's EVEN WORSE. Because I noticed you are using different color temperature in your different frames. ANY ONE knowing anything about panorama stitching knows not to leave their Color Balance in "As Shot" mode. It's a biggest no-no.

However, your article remind me. Perhaps I should write something on panorama and HDR panos. As I have done a bunch of them and it seems like yourself and others can benefit from it.

Thanks for your reply semorg,the HDR most definitely added here and helped me cover the dynamic range. The blown-out highlights are intentional, and if I wanted to avoid them, I'd have enough DR to do so.As for the WB, selecting it after merging is the same here as doing it beforehand.

I actually appreciate the author taking his time to explain his art to us. Maybe you do it differently, Mr. Semorg. If you want to write about this subject, then do it instead of complaining about others. We will be happy to hear about how you do it, and learn from you as well. But your comments as phrased here sound like sour grapes. Vincent...every one knows how to make the walls of those buildings vertical!

But is HUGIN able to create an HDR from raw originals, with raw output? That is what is different in the new ACR covered here, and it allows editing options you don't have if you had to start or end with TIFFs or JPEGs.

My opinion, the composition and contrast don't do this justice. You obviously are an excellent photographer by looking at your other photos but this one just isn't up to the level of your work. I didn't even recognize the stream in the photo...just looked like a greyish area. As such, it doesn't add much to the image and the lack of color and flatness detracts.

This is just my opinion and I would be elated to have even one photo in my portfolio as nice as I see on your website.

P.S. Appreciate the tips on new ACR tools. I didn't know Adobe had added those.

That's absolutely fine Daniel. These articles aren't intended to be a showcase of my best shots - the images are rather selected according to what I have to say about them - in this case the image was selected to explain the new ACR features. I'm aware that I have better shots :)Thanks for your comment, I'm glad you liked my work!

I’m following since a while all you’re tutorials and great pictures. Must say they are totally in what I should do or not. Learned a lot of the way you did it and how I would, should and will do it. But see a lot of negativism: you should have done this or that….Makes me smiling when I look at the pictures of some of these great photographers, who decide about the final image. It seems to me that they are not the masters of the photographic universe, they are just amateurs who love photography but with another view on photography.Love a lot pano, HDR and so one, which are for what I see a solution to the short comes of our digital camera’s. Find me a camera that exactly reproduce what I’m seeing when I take a picture, Sony A7R99, Nikon 899 or so ☺Must say you stay cool and answer with a lot of more kindness than I should on all this critiquesAnd sorry about this rather real RAW answer!Great job look forward to the rest

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